(COVID-19): Campus Health Updates

Care:

• Services rendered to students who are symptomatic and/or have been directly exposed to someone who has tested positive are considered “medically necessary” regardless of whether they subsequently test positive or negative.
• Medically necessary services are covered by health insurance and billable to UC SHIP. 
  • Students covered by UC SHIP are responsible for their usual office visit copays and/or coinsurance related to diagnostic testing. These copay/coinsurance amounts are billed to the student’s Zot Account following payment received by UC SHIP/Anthem.
  • SHC does not bill any other insurance plans. We directly bill the charges to the student’s Zot Account. The student would then seek reimbursement from their insurance carrier.
  • While students are encouraged to seek medically necessary follow-up testing/treatment through SHC regardless of their coverage, non-SHIP students who are residing on campus are not required to be seen at SHC. However, at a minimum, they must upload any documentation regarding testing/treatment to their Student Health Patient Portal.

Daily Self-Checks:

• I get it. No one likes having to send that email or click that button every day. 
• The public health experts are clear though that daily symptom monitoring and pausing, even for just a moment to think about your own symptoms, has the potential to help.
• So, please do it anyway. You can even set up a rule on your email to auto-file the thank you response you get back. 
• If you can’t complete for whatever reason--holiday, illness, taking a screen free day, vacation, etc--simply let your department manager know. 

Grad and Family Housing Policies

Thank you very much for your patience as we have worked through the numerous challenges and balancing of concerns in Graduate and Family Housing. Please see below for one update--visitor policy--and one reminder--events policy. Special thanks to not only the numerous health and student affairs experts all over campus who worked on this but also to AGS who have been tireless advocates for the needs of students and helpful sounding boards for solutions.

Visitor Policy

• Per the email you should have just received from student affairs, residents of Grad and Family Housing may now have visitors if they are there to perform an essential function as defined by the State of California essential workforce directive, for example people who provide care to you, your children, or someone with a disability living in your home.
• Minor children/ dependents of a Graduate and Family Housing resident may also be visitors in other housing units for the purposes of childcare. 
• Consistent with state, local, and University guidelines, as well as guidance from public health experts, this policy has been adopted to minimize the risk of COVID-19 transmission. 
• Each student resident will be responsible for registering their essential worker with the community’s housing office, ensuring their essential worker’s compliance with campus directives and policies, and making every effort to have a stable and limited rotation of caregivers. This registration portal should be available next week.
• The student resident must also complete the Daily Symptom Check for themselves and their minor children/dependents prior to allowing the minor children/dependents into another unit for purposes of childcare. 
• If this updated policy doesn’t fix your concerns, come talk to me during office hours.

No in-person gatherings

• Residents are not permitted to host gatherings of any kind. 
• When you host gatherings, you make it very difficult on your fellow residents as well as on those of us who are advocating for less restrictions in housing in general. Please be mindful of the community and take the gatherings policies very seriously.
• Activities sponsored by your housing community will either be online/remote or carefully designed to conform to campus requirements listed in the Chancellor’s Executive Directive, issued on July 21, 2020.

Study tents on campus
UCI has installed study tents on campus in an effort to provide students and postdocs the opportunity to work and to study outside in shaded areas:

• Langson Library Plaza
• Humanities Hall Plaza

They are available for use from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., have nearby restrooms, and wifi. Please wear face coverings and remain physical distant from your neighbors while in the study tent.

Animal Crossing

• UCI land is live in Animal Crossing: https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/12406/uc-irvine-goes-virtual-on-animal-crossing-new-horizons-with-uci-land
• Go catch some fish and sell some shells and whatever else you like to do in Animal Crossing.
• Oh and read this interesting article by Ian Bogost on Animal Crossing as political and economic praxis: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/04/animal-crossing-isnt-escapist-its-political/610012/

 Academic English 

• Academic English is offering a variety of writing and speaking courses for graduate students for Fall 2020.
• These courses are for graduate students from any discipline and are open to students from all language backgrounds.
• Academic English graduate courses are being delivered remotely, with an optional in-person component.
• Please visit the Schedule of Classes for the latest update and enroll in Academic English courses today!
• For course questions, please email AcademicEnglish@uci.edu.

Join UC Santa Barbara's Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the launch of the 2020-2021 series Anti-Blackness: Difficult Dialogues:

Anti-Blackness, Refusal, and Resistance:

Fugitive Possibilities in Black Education

by kihana miraya ross

Wednesday, October 14

12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

About the Speaker: kihana miraya ross received her doctorate from UC Berkeley in 2016 and is currently an Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University. Her program of research examines the multiplicity of ways that Anti-Blackness is lived by Black students and the ways Black educators and students engage in educational fugitivity to refuse and resist. kihana’s most recent article, “Call it what it is: Anti-blackness,” was published in The New York Times and she is continuing her public facing work in a project with Colin Kaepernick centering the politics of abolition. Her forthcoming book length manuscript explores both the ways Black girls experience Anti-Blackness and hypersexualization in their school, and also, the numerous ways their production of Black Girl Space facilitates a reimagining of a Black girl identity and a radical Black subjectivity.

• Register at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScIkw43tgWCa2W1oZNi6zHsIhDFZ9NQilJdTEsvUnh1sQtDUw/viewform
• You must have a UCSB or UCI email address to register.

Internet  - Copy Pasted from a few weeks ago, but still important

As you all no doubt already know, your working and teaching--and associated frustration levels with those--may be impacted by the quality of your internet connection. Before the fall quarter begins:

• Test your network speed using https://speedtest.net or similar
• Verify that your reported speed is what you expect it should be 
• If you are a resident of Grad and Family Housing:

• You may need to connect to the wall via ethernet rather than using your WiFi router. 
• If you don’t have those capabilities, fill out this form https://forms.gle/KxR41tsg2Kj8oCrB9 and we will work to get you an ethernet adapter for your laptop and ethernet cabling.

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) has created a resource page with various options to address internet connectivity concerns. These tips will be especially useful for people not in grad and family housing who may be relying on external providers.

• Improving Broadband Internet: Tips for testing and strengthening your residential service, upgrading your modem, or boosting your Wifi signal
• Smartphone Hotspot Tethering: If broadband improvements are not successful, you may try using your mobile phone as a wifi hotspot
• Mobile WiFi Hotspot: If you need a more reliable or back up Wifi hotspot, you can obtain and use a dedicated mobile hotspot device
• Internet Service Providers and Plan Information: Links to support, plan and COVID-related resources from several internet providers
• Low-Cost Internet Options: Links to cost-effective provider options

If you do not have a suitable internet connection at home or repeatedly encounter connectivity issues that impede your ability to teach effectively:

• General assignment classrooms are available for preparing and delivering remote courses. 

• Please review the Use of Teaching Space Plans for important guidance on accessing any campus facility. 
• When you are ready to reserve a room, please work with your Schedule of Classes Coordinator to submit the request to the Registrar. If you don’t know who this is, ask your faculty advisor, department chair, or the professor for whom you are TAing.
• Instructors and TAs are also permitted to use campus offices for remote teaching. 
  • You MUST work with your department to make sure they have approved plans in place for occupancy of your space. 
  • More details are available in the Use of Teaching Space Plans document, under Unit-controlled spaces section. 

In Closing

Are you tired? I am so very tired. I think we all are, globally. I need to ask you to hold on for just a while longer though. You have done a wonderful job of working hard to serve each other, to be a true community for so long. And yes, it can all feel pointless and like just too much when you go out and see someone with no mask on or you hear about another immigration policy or you even just have the regular stresses of life--a bad grade for your kid, a paper rejected for you, a burnt dinner that you neglected while answering emails and the phone. I know how you are feeling. We are all feeling it. The idea in February that this is where we would be in October would be unfathomable. In some ways, it still is. 

But I need to ask you to hold on just a little longer. Be kind to each other. Be generous with each other, with your undergrads, with your advisors. And persevere. Some of you may not feel you can go on like this much longer. This pace, these challenges, they may feel insurmountable. You can though. You can persevere, maybe with a little extra help from Graduate Division or your department or your friends and family, but you can do it. 

Nearly 500 years ago, Hussein Nishah wrote “I am too positive to be doubtful, too optimistic to be fearful, and too determined to be defeated.” I have seen a positive, optimistic, and determined Anteater community for the last several months, and though it may feel impossible, I know that community is still there.

Wear your face coverings. Stay socially distanced. Get enough sleep. Eat as well as you can. It may seem impossible, but as Nelson Mandela famously said, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

Wishing you a weekend of rest, justice, and peace on behalf of Graduate Division,

Gillian Hayes
Kleist Professor of Informatics
Vice Provost for Graduate Education
Dean of the Graduate Division